Ricerc@Sapienza

The interplay between local and imperial perceptions was a driving force behind the gradual evolution of the Indian empire. An important contribution to the full understanding of this process may come from enquiries into the nature of the British administrative policies, along with their inspiring ideologies and notions, in connection with the tribal community of the Hos of Singhbhum, a district in the erstwhile Chotanagpur Division of Bengal Presidency.The changing notions of rule and subjecthood naturally had a distinct impact upon the adivasi people.

In the context of the changing nature of India’s relationship with her tribal or Adivasi population, this paper seeks to analyse the construction ‘tribes’ in colonial India and how these came to influence contemporary India’s understandings of the category. Arguing that state policies are actuated by myriad ways in which target populations are defined, conceptualized and represented, this paper seeks to trace the contentious categorizations and multiple identities that have been imagined for, thrust upon and assumed by such communities since colonial times.

This article analyses accounts of travels to Asia written by Bengali women in the early
20th century, a period when there was an immense intellectual curiosity about Asia in colonial India.
Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 was widely interpreted as a victory over Western
hegemony in Asia. The notion of a pan-Asian identity based on a shared history and cultural heritage
was debated and popularized in the Bengal public sphere. Together with this, there was also a

Adivasis are the indigenous people of eastern and central India who were identified as “tribes” under British colonial rule and who today have a constitutional status as “Scheduled Tribese. The notion of tribe, despite its evolutionist character, has been internalized to a large extent by the indigenous people themselves and has had a considerable role in shaping community identities. Colonial studies, moreover, were the first systematic investigations into these marginalized and subordinated communities and form an important primary source in historical research on Adivasis.